The value of Pi is usually figured out to four or five digits. However, a team of Swiss scientists broke the world record for calculating the mathematical constant, and it has now been officially recognized by Guinness World Records. After three and a half months and a data center’s worth of computer equipment, the researchers calculated Pi to a massive 62.8 trillion digits.
Pi defines the ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle, coming out to 3.1415926535 and so on, ad infinitum. These decimal places never end and follow a random pattern.
The researchers from the University of Applied Sciences in Graubünden, Switzerland calculated Pi more accurately than ever before – 62.8 trillion digits. It was a huge step up from the previous record of 50 trillion, set by Timothy Mullican in January 2020, and double the previous record of 31.4 trillion set by Google in 2019.
The researchers used an extensive hardware setup to land on these numbers. It comprised two AMD CPUs with 32 cores each, 1 TB of RAM, and a massive 510 TB of storage space. The Pi digits alone took up 63 TB. All up, it took the team 108 days and nine hours to make the calculation.
It took a lot of effort to make this happen. The team highlighted weak points in system infrastructure, such as insufficient backup capacity.
And in case you were wondering, the last 10 newly discovered digits of Pi are 7817924264.
